Happy Monday. Big thanks to Andy for handling the morning post while I was gone.

A record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue: the economy. Much of that is related to high gas prices, which the President stupidly thinks should be higher.

The UK's "Equalities Minister" has ordered government lawyers not to defend the right of Christians to wear crosses at work in a case before the European rights court. The minister says wearing the cross is not a "genuinely recognized" form of practicing the Christian faith.

New, amateur footage of the Challenger disaster has been found. Still awful.

At SXSW: Nick Denton, Gawker founder, says online comment sections are a joke. Somehow the HQ's has escaped the fate of most. The trick is to call it a thingy.

And a Mass Effect 3 review. I'm loving this game.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (116)
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Last day, sorry. On an airplane all day with no internet.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 AM | Comments (19)
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Welcome to the end of the weekend ONT party.

Are You Smarter Than An 'Administrator'?

Well almost certainly smarter than this one:

He is is Rick Roach, who is in his fourth four-year term representing District 3 on the Board of Education in Orange County, Fl., a public school system with 180,000 students. Concerned over how effective the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) for 10th graders is, he recently took it himself and well, let's just say there is a reason he was never called Rick 'the Brainiac' Roach:

"I won't beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that's a 'D,' and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

"It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities....

You can actually take the math section of the FCAT here. Note that they give you all the formulas needed and allow calculators. This is NOT a hard test. So if he was forced to guess at the answers, it's because he's forgotten (or simply never learned) basic math. Here's an example problem from the test:

Assuming he wasn't deliberately sandbagging on the test I'm thinking it's time to have an independent audit of the Orange County Board of Education. And do an accreditation check on all the institutions that ever awarded him degrees.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:11 PM | Comments (764)
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They are so invested in their boyfriend. Iran is no threat, they are rational players. Also, Israel, feh.

It doesn't matter. Israel certainly doesn't matter, and by the way Netanyahu is a jerk. Because Eleanor's precious said so. The only thing that matters is that the Retard-In-Chief gets cover for his idiotic foreign policy positions. That's it.

via adamsbaldwin, with a good Dr. Strangelove reference.

Newsweek. Worth a dollar. You can stick one in Eleanor's yap if ya want.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:05 PM | Comments (308)
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So NFL free agency begins on Monday, and itÂ’s already been a dramatic offseason as free agency goes. Peyton Manning is on the market, the Saints are struggling with a monster contract for Drew Brees while trying to re-sign core free agents, the Redskins mortgaged the farm to draft Robert Griffin III, and so forth.

So, as a Saints fan (in case you missed it), let me throw my opinion out there about the Saints and the program they had in place where players were paid to injure other players: They broke the rules, they were told to stop, they kept breaking the rules, they got caught, and they have to pay the price for that.

Now to the fine printÂ…
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:30 PM | Comments (120)
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And driving a Mercedes. A Mercedes.

Grayson was traveling to an upscale fundraising event for his Congressional campaign.

...

Investigators said Grayson was driving a Mercedes, when he ran a red light and hit the bus.

The event's 1% guests included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and loudmouthed liberal actress Cheryl Hines.

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (184)
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Los Angeles is the winner in the massive Rock Paper Scissors game amongst the nations largest cities, with it's newest rock star finally arriving amongst throngs of worshipers Saturday:

SMOD is here to dangle over your heads in a seismic zone

Levitated Mass should open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in April/May, per my sources. As an art lover and a conservative growing increasingly pessimistic about November, I cannot wait to walk under the 340 ton boulder.

When visiting LACMA, I am thankful for the Sunday "suggested donations" special. It makes me less irritated when visiting the Broad Contemporary. I love Richard Serra's work on level one. But the inclusion of the world's richest taxidermist? Damien Hirst irks me. His spot paintings take my ire to a totally different level:

Asshole never connects four.

So I was delighted to read Daniel Maidman's recent attempt to answer art critic Jerry Saltz's call for anyone who was game to make him a Hirst Spot. Maidman goes more into theory than I could ever hope to do (the difference between pretending to know what you are talking about and...actually knowing), and spots the fundamental flaw in Hirst's latest exercise in showing meaning is no object:

But look - is anybody going to look at a spot painting because of its aching humanity? Not unless they're autistic or schizophrenic. So when you balance one consideration - the humanity - against the other - the striking information-theoretic formalism - which facet of the spot paintings is more interesting? I think it's the formalism. And I think the flaw in the spot paintings is that Mr. Hirst, as evidenced in the episode with the five yellow spots, himself brings a residual humanity to his project which interferes with the most interesting part of its nature.

If you are desperate to add more bookmarks, Maidman's blog makes for a great read.

A year ago when I started doing the Art Thread, a moron brought up architecture. After re-watching Shock of The New again, why not?
Many repeatedly rant on the "awfulness" of modern art, yet few rant on the far more awful attempts by modern architects to take similar concepts and a desire for "a utopia made real" and...fail: more...

Posted by: CAC at 12:01 PM | Comments (182)
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Here are the rules from the original Saturday Afternoon Experimental Insta-Story:

Anyone can add to the story. But you can only add three words at a time. Any meta comment or any other comment that is not part of the story must be set apart in square brackets. [Like this.]

Let's have this one be a mystery. In space. With phasers and big boobs. And a princess. A gold ring. A wolf. And a shrubbery. I'll start it off:

Once upon a...

Rule change: Four words this time.

So, here we go: It was a dark...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 11:23 AM | Comments (276)
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Oh, and Santorum 45% Obama 44%. Romney has now lead Obama for 3 straight days, Santorum for 2. Still meh. Art thread later.

Posted by: CAC at 08:35 AM | Comments (260)
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Today, USS Enterprise deploys for her 22nd and last time and to a region that is starting to really heat up. USNI has a nice little piece highlighting some of her accomplishments during her 52 years of service. Last Lap For Enterprise CVAN/CVN-65.

When Enterprise joined the fleet in October of 1961, she was one of 24 carriers, and the only nuclear-powered carrier, in a Navy of 870 ships. Today she is one of 11 nuclear-powered carriers in a Navy of 285 ships.

Fair winds and following seas to the crew of USS Enterprise as you head into harms way.

Posted by: CDR M at 07:53 AM | Comments (98)
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